?’ leads him straight to Jardine.
Faced with such outrageous behaviour, Smits is at something of a loss. Private Jardine stands before him, ramrod straight, face impassive, staring straight ahead.
‘What did you just say?’ roars Smits.
‘What did you just say?’ yells expressionless Private Jardine.
Some of the men can’t contain themselves any longer. The whoops of laughter are like a slap in the face for Corporal Smits. All he can muster is a strangled: ‘Silence, you baboons.’ To which Private Jardine responds in kind.
All discipline in Smits’s platoon dissolves. The men are laughing so hard, the neat lines they have held waver and break. Amidst the general mayhem, the only person not laughing is Private Jardine. That small detail is not lost on befuddled Corporal Smits.
The scene that plays out next is like some madcap, off-kilter comedy.
‘Silence!’ bellows Smits.
‘Silence!’ responds Jardine.
‘Button it!!’
‘Button it!!’
‘You’ll be sorry!!!’
‘You’ll be sorry!!!’
‘This is your last chance!!!’
‘This is your last chance!!!’
‘Jeez!’
‘Jeez!’
‘Grrrnngg!!!’
‘Grrrnngg!!!’
And so it goes. Until Corporal Smits, marshalling his rising anger, realises that the only way he will bring this debacle to an end is to have Jardine arrested, which he does, ordering four of the men to seize him and march him off to detention.
‘Left, right, left right.’ The rhythm is barked by an exasperated Smits, with Jardine as resolute as ever providing that infuriating echo.
If ever there was the suspicion that Private Jardine was deliberately mocking Corporal Smits, it is quickly dispelled in detention. Whatever the military police verbally hurl at him is flung right back and even when Jardine is roughed up a bit – you know, to teach him a little respect – the repetitions continue, despite a thick lip.
The Jardine who eventually arrives in the psychiatry department is very psychotic. His paranoid delusions are unremarkable in their content, if one has the time to tease them out between replies that rebound with a conversation-crippling consistency. The Colonel takes a keen interest in the case. ‘What you are witnessing,’ he informs us, ‘is a florid example of echolalia, a sign of thought disorder and part of Jardine’s schizophrenia. Is it not fascinating?’
Indeed it is, Colonel. But fascination with psychosis is only part of the equation here. The other part is the context in which it appears. The nature of life in the military, with the strictures that come with rank and the individual’s preordained place in an unyielding hierarchy, leaves no space for wiggle room. When the cogs slip the results are more often than not extraordinary. Jardine’s psychosis, his textbook echolalia, is transformed into gross pantomime. Not a month passes without further tragicomic variations in the patients that come my way. How can it be otherwise? Madness and the military, what a combustible mix!
My bulging casebook delivers another example. The army loves a sportsman. Play sport, any sport, and you are cut a lot of slack. So one morning when a new patient is admitted a ripple of excitement runs through the ward. Just about everybody knows Jacques. Rugby and athletics are his twin specialties, but rumour has it he can hit a great golf ball too. What is he doing on a psychiatry ward? The referral details are vague. Apparently all had been well until our sporting hero returned from a brief trip to the operational area of South West Arica. He comes back an altered man. Gone is the gregarious, fun-loving, ball-thumping extrovert, replaced by an aloof individual, quiet, not so much sombre as disconnected, difficult to relate to on a personal level. Most strikingly, he has lost all interest in sport. He gives up training, appears sluggish behind the scrum, is indifferent when the coach benches him, and when told his team has lost an important match simply shrugs as if to say who cares anyway? It is his apathy to life in general that sparks the referral.
Has something traumatic happened in South West Africa? No one can say, least of all Jacques. He claims he can remember very little of his time there. The few weeks he spent are a blur, the details fuzzy, timelines imprecise. He has not been on a combat mission. His commanding officer in an infantry unit confirms this, but can tell us little more. He is as nonplussed as the rest of Jacques’ fan club.
Jacques has been on the unit for a couple of weeks now. It is all very mysterious – he is becoming more elusive by the day, slipping further away from any diagnostic formulation. He denies feeling anxious, depressed or suicidal. He has not lost touch with reality like poor Jardine, so psychosis is ruled out. But all is clearly not well. His indifference and his patchy memory of his trip up north are the telltale signs.
The Colonel calls us together. He is very animated. ‘What you are seeing is an excellent example of la belle indifference, the patient seemingly indifferent to his malady,’ he tells us. ‘It is a sign that all is not well in the unconscious. We need to unlock this man’s unconscious if he is to heal.’
The Colonel has a plan. He has the key to the lock. It is called narco-analysis.
There is a long history to this procedure, I learn. Essentially it involves relaxing the patient with a strong sedative, hence the ‘narco’ part, putting him into a state of reduced consciousness and in the process lessening the inhibitions that are impeding the recall of repressed memories. It turns out our unit has access to a man who has reportedly done more narco-analyses than any other in the entire world. Whether there is any truth to this extravagant claim is impossible to judge, but there is no doubt that Dr. Nothnagel is very experienced in the procedure. He is a large man, a natty dresser with a fine, clipped moustache, à la Errol Flynn. He chain smokes and even when between cigarettes he has a mannerism that involves inhaling as though a phantom cigarette is still plastered to his lips.
Nothnagel is not in the military, but consults to them once a week. He is the all-action psychiatrist. Women love him. I suspect the pharmaceutical industry is just as enamoured, for he is liberal in dishing out medications. The Noah’s Ark prescription, we call it, two of everything – anxiolytics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, anticholinergics, mood stabilisers and hypnotics, and all in large doses. The prescriptions are passed on to the pharmacists who scurry around filling bottles of pills which are handed over in large brown bags to patients who cannot seem to get enough of these concoctions.
Dr. Nothnagel’s speciality, however, is running concurrent narco-analyses and he is one slick operator. This is how it goes: He books patients simultaneously. They are all women and each has her own private cubicle with a comfortable bed. Nothnagel inserts an intravenous line after each woman has laid down, and gradually starts infusing a large dose of Valium. The drip is timed to run over forty-five minutes. The women are encouraged to relax, let the sedative work its magic, and free associate. ‘Give voice to whatever comes to mind,’ Nothnagel urges. ‘Let it all come out.’
He starts a tape recorder. There are three women and three tape recorders running simultaneously in three cubicles. The women start babbling, pouring out their hidden, unconscious feelings, while our resident world-expert narco-analyser pops outside for a Camel Plain.
I
